Friday, August 31, 2012

Scientists have discovered the elixir of youth - except it isn't an elixir at all.

One
of the things that makes people feel old is that their muscles get
weak, they get clapped out. It's called sarcopaenia, and it's one of the
reasons why elderly people end up in nursing homes or under major care.

Scientists have discovered that one of the reasons for this
muscle weakness is that the energy factories inside cells – mitochondria
– become clapped out themselves, they become damaged by free radicals.

Researchers
have found a way of reviving mitochondria but it's actually a way of
hoovering them up. They've found that if you stress muscle, the muscle
hoovers up old mitochondria and replaces them with new ones.

And
one of the best ways of stressing muscle is actually progressive weight
training, and it seems to work. They also found that if you added the
performance-enhancing compound creatine to the training people's muscles
performed even better.
What they haven't discovered is how to
fix up the mitochondria in wrinkles, but when they do, I'll be the first
to tell you about it.